1. Technical Field
This invention relates to cordless telephones and, more particularly, to a cordless telephone which incorporates a telephone answering device interrogatable from a portable unit associated with said telephone.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Cordless telephone systems and telephone answering devices are both in wide use today in many businesses and homes. Both cordless telephone systems and telephone answering devices have specific or unique features and in different ways are very beneficial to a user. For example, a cordless telephone system, which includes a portable or handset unit and a base unit, permits a user to become untethered and move about freely in a business or at home. The greater mobility provided to a user of a cordless telephone system over, for example, a corded telephone system is readily apparent. And a telephone answering device is quite useful for a user in that it answers incoming calls and records messages when the user cannot or does not want to answer the telephone. The answering device may also note the day and time for each message and advantageously allows the user to retrieve his or her messages either when colocated with the answering device or located remote from such device.
Many arrangements are available today that integrate both cordless telephone systems and telephone answering devices. Three specific arrangements are respectively described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,677,655, U.S. Pat. No. 4,881,259 and U.S. Pat. No. 5,481,596. A cordless answering system is also commercially available from Lucent Technologies Inc. as Model Number 5635. Although flexibility and control are available in these integrated systems, such systems do not provide in the handset unit some features that are available in a combined cordless telephone base unit and telephone answering device. Moreover, such systems do not permit accessing information now generally available from a caller for assisting a user in deciding whether to answer or not answer an incoming call. For access to this information, a user would have to purchase another device and colocate it with the handset unit. Such device is usually expensive, however, and such purchase therefore undesirable. Thus, while the above arrangements have been generally satisfactory in the past, it is now technically feasible and desirable to provide an inexpensive, integrated cordless telephone and telephone answering device which permits a user to easily access at he portable unit both features and additional information present at the combined base unit and telephone answering device.